In the final “lame duck” weeks of the 113th Congress, Day Pitney partner Michael Shea is first on the national list of unconfirmed U.S. District Court nominees — a kind of poster boy for partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C.
The choice of outgoing U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Shea was nominated in Feburary and won bipartisan approval by a 15-3 vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee in April. He has been waiting the longest of all 15 federal trial judge appointments pending before the full Senate, a logjam that clearly wasn’t going anywhere before the Nov. 6 elections.
